Dr. Manoj Chopra

Dr. Manoj B. Chopra currently serves as the Chair of the Advisory Council of Faculty Senates of Florida and represents the statewide university faculty as a member of the Board of Governors.

He is a Professor of Civil Engineering in the College of Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Central Florida. He served as the Director of the Stormwater Management Academy and specializes in Geotechnical Engineering. He received his PhD and MS degrees in civil engineering from the University at Buffalo (SUNY) and his BE (Honors) in civil engineering from India. He joined the University of Central Florida in 1993 as an Assistant Professor. He served as the Chair of the UCF Faculty Senate from 2005 to 2009 and was a member of the UCF Board of Trustees.

His research areas include soil erosion and sediment control, pervious pavements, soil behavior and geo-environmental engineering. He has supervised numerous doctoral and masters students and conducted over $5 million of sponsored research. For his research activities, he shared the 2001 Excellence in Environmental Engineering award and also received the NASA Gold Quality Award for Continual Improvement for his patented work in innovative groundwater cleanup techniques. He also serves as the Director of the UCF Deep Foundation research facility funded by the Florida Department of Transportation. He has several publications in the development and application of numerical methods to poroelasticity, soil erosion, and seismic soil dynamics.

He has received three UCF Teaching Incentive Program awards as well as the UCF Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching and the UCF Excellence in Faculty Advising awards. He was awarded the Engineer of the Year in 2000 by the Central Florida National Engineers Week committee. The students in engineering honored him with the Tau Beta Pi Engineering Professor Award for three years in a row (1996-98) and the Golden Apple for Teaching Award for 2007, 2008 and 2009.

He is a registered professional engineer in the State of Florida and has received local media coverage for his professional opinions on sinkholes in Central Florida. In his spare time, he travels with his sons for their soccer tournaments and plays with electronic gadgets.